I Told You So

Ahem. Excuse me.

Did I see "Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith" yet?

You're damn right I did.

Caught it Monday night, our last in London, with some of the Samizdata gang. Almost as fun as the movie was the experience of four libertarian geeks, walking the streets of Chelsea at midnight, mercilessly dissecting what we'd just watched. On now to the movie itself.

"Sith" was, for all its faults, Star Wars as I remember it.

Admittedly, my standards are low. As I've said here and many other places, I expect only three things out of a Star Wars movie. I want to see some cool stuff I've never seen before. I want to see some wicked lightsaber action. (Really, I just have a weakness for any kind of Hollywood sword fighting.) And I want to see some stuff blow up real good. Sith delivered on those counts, and then some.

The minuses were, as everyone already knows, the love scenes and the writing (and some of the delivery). Um… hello? This is Star Wars. Does no one remember the Tree House Scene in "Return of the Jedi"? Luke, Leia, and what felt like four hours of hot sex cams exposition, explaining stuff we already knew. And with bad dialogue. And worse delivery.

"One thing's for sure – we're all going to be a lot thinner!" That line is a favorite from the original Star Wars, and 28 years ago it generated knee-slapping laughter. But is it really any better than anything in the five films that followed? Please. It's right down there with "I'd rather kiss a Wookiee!" Anyway. We don't go to Star Wars for wit or acting or dialog. We go to see some pretty stuff blow up real good.

A few bits (the aforementioned love scenes) made me laugh inappropriately. Kind of like the "I've got gas" look Luke, um, emoted in Episode VI when Yoda died. But let's not dwell on the bad.

Other scenes got to me more than I could have imagined.

The montage sequence when the Clone Troopers turned on their Jedi leaders was one of those, and one I haven't seen discussed much. It was brutal, heartbreaking, and effective. Watching warriors cut down by their comrades without warning or explanation… that was tough. Every one of those Jedi died with the same expression: Utter confusion. Is there a worse way to die?

The "seduction" conversations between Anakin and Palpatine were almost as good, and would have been better had Ian McDiarmid played both roles. We knew from the last two movies (if, and only if, we were paying very close attention) that Palpatine is a guy who loves playing people, playing with his power. In those scenes he got to do it center stage, and his joy showed through the evil.

Also, I finally figured out why Hayden Christiansen's line delivery was so …off… in both movies he starred in. Listen closely, and you'll realize he's trying to imitate James Earl Jones. His pauses, his inflections, are all pure "THIS!… is C!NN!" Really, he should have played it straight, and let the transformation been made complete by Jones's voice and the breathing machine.

Besides, white Canadian boys just shouldn't try to imitate a Southern-born black man raised in Detroit. They just shouldn't.

Really though, Hayden needed to carry only one scene to sell the movie. Just one. The scene where, triple-amputated and on fire, he curses out his old master. And that scene was perfect. Just perfect. Pure, raw, screaming hatred – the kind you knew was inside of Vader, but he never let loose. Vader couldn't cut loose – he had an Imperial Navy to run. Burning Limbless Vader had to let it all out, and did.

Final verdict? I left the theater smiling and chatting and debating with my friends.

There's not a whole lot more to ask from a popcorn movie.

We need a new termite treatment and bond. So I take an hour and a half off of work today to meet with one weasel--uh, I mean, inspector, who sits down at my kitchen table to give me his spiel, including a long and very specific bit about how his company's bond is better than his competitions', because "we don't just cover structural stuff, we cover the contents, too, you know, cabinets, books, anything else that might get damaged, where those guys don't."

Then, after I got rid of the guy, I read his chaturbate contract, which says, "This Agreement provides for repair of structural damage only. It excludes damage to the contents of the Property."

Do these jackasses assume that nobody's going to read the contract? You don't want to carry some coverage or another, fine. Frankly, I'm not really worried about termites eating my books. But don't sit there in my house and lie to my face.

Sumbitch had the most expensive price, too. Into the trash his quote goes.

I've been skeptical about the much-discussed housing bubble in the past. I'm getting less skeptical when I read things like this:

As recently as 2002, only 11% of the new mortgages in the [San Francisco Bay] area were interest-only mortgages. But today 66% of new mortgages in the area are financed that way. While such mortgages are not as common nationwide, the upward trend extends across the country. Fewer than 10% of new mortgages nationwide were interest-only mortgages in 2002 but that has now risen to 31%.

That's from a pithy and rather scary WSJ column by Thomas Sowell, and I'm sorry to say that it tracks with what I've been hearing about in two regions I'm familiar with, namely metro Atlanta and the north Gulf Coast of Florida.

Atlanta first. Driving around here and seeing signs for houses ranging from "upper $400's" to "$750's" and up--and this is not in the fancier sections, mind you--I've been asking for years, "Who the hell buys these places, and what do they do for a living? How can that many people afford the mortgage on a house like that?" The answer may be, "They can't--unless it's floating on a cheap ARM or LIBOR."

I was talking with a friend a couple of weeks ago, whose next-door neighbor is indebted about as deeply as you can possibly imagine: interest-only main mortgage on a very pricey home, a home-equity loan based on its appreciation (meaning he owns absolutely nothing), and various auto loans and personal lines of credit. According to my friend, this guy and his wife are obsessed with 'keeping up with the Joneses,' and have spent every penny of that credit on lavish home improvements, furnishings, electronics and such. Here's the kicker: they're trying to sell off their house to buy a bigger and more expensive one in a supposedly more-desireable subdivision, but they're asking so much (they have to, they're upside down on the house), they aren't getting any bites. And balloon payments on those loans are getting closer every day.

No, wait, that wasn't the kicker. That's just a random data point about one couple who're making spectacularly stupid decisions. Here's the kicker: the neighborhood they're in has a 29% foreclosure rate, according to a local realtor my friend also talked to. This isn't what you'd think of as a high-risk area, either. This is one of the toniest suburbs in the state. There are an awful lot of trailer parks that don't have 29% foreclosure rates.

Second, north Florida. For the last four years or so--beginning roughly fifteen minutes after I sold the house I used to own in Panama City--real estate in the Florida Panhandle has been on a jaw-dropping boom. Lots within smelling distance of the water began to flip at multiples of their original selling prices, and construction has exploded. Panama City Beach alone has over thirty new high-rise condo complexes in various stages of construction--forget the old "Redneck Riviera" scene, it looks like South Beach down there today.

You've heard of "doing land-office business?" That's what's been going on in the Panhandle since roughly 2002. Lots, condos, and houses have flipped and flipped and flipped, from one speculating owner to another, with the price just about doubling every time in many cases--and almost all of them are on interest-only or ARM loans. Housing has gotten so expensive along the once-sleepy coast, home values are being forced up well to the north, as people look to once-backwater burgs like Ponce De Leon and Defuniak Springs for an affordable house.

"So what?" you ask. "Coastal property always appreciates, this is just a previously little-known area that's been discovered and is being bought up." And that's true--except that according to a construction foreman I know in Destin, housing sales plummeted by 28% in April, and May is looking just as bad. He's working on a large project in Destin where five "flips" backed out on deals in just the last two weeks. He also tells me that multitudes of "for sale" signs have popped up all along the coastal roads in the last couple of months, where previously the properties were being snapped up within days or even hours of going on the market.

All anecdotal, to be sure, and Neal Cavuto would argue that we're talking about three particularly distorted markets where speculation is rampant, not the whole country. But all of the above, plus Sowell's numbers certainly suggests to me that there are going to be an awful lot of high-dollar properties defaulting into the hand of lenders over the next couple of years. Opportunities for some, and disasters for others.

The blogosphere lost it's go-to guy for links and What's Hot when Glenn went back on vacation. Then Lileks got busy on his new book, which I, for one, will be buying; it sounds like marvelous fun. And while I'm not up there with those guys, I hate to report to my delightfully addicted readership that I'll be blogging half as much most of the time from now until the wedding.

But fear not! There are lots of excellent blog posts out there on https://www.jasminlive.mobi/ you should be reading more often. Mike Hendrix is The Man when you want a six pack of truth. Read Juan Gato for an honest belly laugh. And, of course, Dawn Olsen can make you comfortably squirmy -- now that she's back from Hawaii, bitch.

See all those links on the left? I try to visit each one of them every single day. They're all good -- that's why they're linked.

So quit complaining and check'em all out already.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention a couple things. First, unless there's a war on, summer is just a slow news time. August will be worse, what with Congress in recess and the President (I imagine) back in Crawford. And in case you're wondering, his Crawford ranch is certainly wired well enough to run a shooting war in Iraq, so don't let a "vacation" fool you.

Secondly, even if he weren't working on his new book, Lileks would have earned a two-week reprieve from blogging just for using the phrase "Bergen-Belsen whistles" last week. That turn of phrase was so viciously beautiful that I damn near wet myself. I'd link to it in case you missed that particular Bleat, but Lileks left us without a way to access his archives.

Cruel, man, just cruel.

Dash Rip Rock, the greatest bar band that never quite made the big time, has joined the hordes of podcasters with a recurring show hosted by founder Bill Davis. A feast for Dash-o-philes and a treat for just about anybody who likes music, it's chock full of demos, rarities and live tracks, as well as comments and stories from Bill and a sampling of his faves from other artists. Check it out, it's Dash-tastic.

Speaking of Dash fans, if anybody out there can hook me up with a copy of "Ned, Fred and Dickhead," the live disc Bill mentions in podcast #1 (which features a killer version of "Operator" from that CD, recorded by the original Dash lineup in 1986), or even just tell me where I can buy a copy, you will get a Genuine Certified Thing. Drop me a line if you know where I can get that one.

I've always thought that one of the biggest problems with schools, at any level, is too many of the adults who work there never had any life experiences outside of school. After finishing school, they immediately became teachers, just changing where they stood (or sat) in the classroom. For some of them, never having lived in the "real world" outside of a schoolhouse had the deleterious effect of never really forcing them to grow up, and to set aside their own adolesent hang-ups and insecurities.